NHS changes to Musculoskeletal Services across West Herts

16th February 2018

Are you aware of the changes to the NHS Physiotherapy services across West Herts?

Orchard Clinic has been providing NHS physiotherapy for the GP’s and residents of St Albans for the last 25 years. This originally started when the clinic was based in Orchard House Lane in Holywell Hill and continued after our move to Adelaide Street in 2003.

It has been a pleasure to be able to provide this service, and something our staff and Post Graduate training students have enjoyed.

Unfortunately, from February 2018, Musculoskeletal Services across West Herts, which encompasses physiotherapy, triage clinics and some GP Rheumatology clinics, have been outsourced by the Herts Valley Commission Care Group (HVCCG) to a private company called Connect Health.

Part of the outsourced companies tender was not to use any Private Physiotherapy clinics across West Herts in providing NHS physiotherapy. Therefore through no fault of our own, we will no longer be able to provide NHS funded physiotherapy care.

Although this change in our service provision is disappointing, we continue as a private physiotherapy clinic with a large private clientele base and we will work to expand this service. Even if you have been referred to NHS Physiotherapy we are still more than happy to see you if you are waiting for your treatment to come through, or after your allotted sessions have finished.

Physiotherapy Services available at Orchard Clinic

At Orchard Clinic we have physiotherapists that not only have basic physiotherapy qualifications, but have gone on to extensive study and been awarded Post Graduate MSc qualifications in providing Musculoskeletal physiotherapy. This means they can perform very detailed assessments of your problems and use this information to tailor the appropriate treatment from their vast repertoire of skills. Only 5% of physiotherapists across the UK have this qualification. This repertoire not only covers back, neck and spinal problems, but also sports injuries, all joints in the body and lesser seen problems such as headaches coming from the neck, vertigo problems and split rectus stomach muscles after childbirth.

Using the skills of our highly trained physiotherapists we will continue to offer services under self-paying and all insurance based funding schemes. This allows us to set the amount of time we can see clients for. Performing detailed assessments and treatments takes time. As a self autonomous Private Clinic we can decide how long we spend with clients and therefore we choose to take 1 hour for an initial assessment and treatment and 30 minutes for subsequent follow ups. Using well trained Physio’s and taking time, allows us to meet our goals of getting client better, meeting their goals and helping clients manage whatever issues their body has.

Additional exercise classes to assist you

Becky Moore teaches Pilates at Orchard Physiotherapy Clinic

Our circumstance change has also allowed us to offer more classes at the clinic. We have introduced additional Pilates classes for Osteoporosis and for the ‘over 60’s’. One of our Pilates instructors, Becky Moore is now able to offer 1:1 Pilates sessions, giving clients a more personally tailored Pilates experience.

We have also been able to introduce a Therapeutic Yoga class under out Yoga instructor Allison Pearlman. She teaches Yin based Yoga which is excellent at stretching tight myofascial structures (muscle and the connective tissues), which are chronically tight in a lot of the body problems we see, especially back and neck problems.

In the future we will concentrate on our Private Physiotherapy service provision and continue to expand our exercise class availability.

To let our clients know about these services, we now have a ‘Facebook’ page http://facebook.com/orchardphysioclinic/. Please visit us and ‘Like’ our page so you can keep up to date with any new classes/services and offers available at the clinic.

Social media is useful, but nothing beats good ‘word of mouth’ recommendations, so please recommend us to a friend to help spread awareness of our specialised service.

To visit our clinic as a private patient, see our appointments page for further information, or contact the clinic on 01727 855414.

For more information on the conditions we treat or service we provide, or to book an appointment: